European tourism faces turbulence only weeks after restart

BERLIN (AP) — Europe’s tourism revival is running into turbulence only weeks after countries reopened their borders, with rising infections in Spain and other nations causing increasing concern among health authorities over people bringing the coronavirus home from their summer vacations.

European countries started opening up to each other’s tourists in mid-June, but recent events have shown that the new freedom to travel is subject to setbacks.

Over the weekend, Britain imposed a 14-day quarantine on travellers arriving from Spain, Norway ordered a 10-day quarantine for people returning from the entire Iberian peninsula, and France urged its citizens not to visit Spain’s Catalonia region.

In Austria, the lakeside resort town of St. Wolfgang shortened bar opening hours after an outbreak was detected on Friday.

By Monday, 53 people had tested positive, including many people working in the tourism industry.

In Germany, officials decided last week to set up testing stations at airports to encourage people arriving from a long list of countries deemed high-risk — including popular destinations such as Turkey — to get tested.

They will also allow people to get tested elsewhere for free within three days of arrival.

Bavaria’s governor, Markus Soeder, said he is worried about travellers returning from vacation.

Referring to the Austrian ski resort that was an early European hot spot in March, he said: “My worry is not that there will be one big Ischgl, but that there will be many mini-Ischgls.”

Soeder called for tests of returning vacationers from risky areas to be made obligatory, something the federal government is considering.

“Mostly it is the considerate people who have behaved very cautiously on vacation anyway who take up the voluntary offers, while those who are more careless don’t take a voluntary test,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Helge Braun, told RBB Inforadio.

New infections in Germany have been creeping higher from a low level.

The tourism industry employs 2.6 million people in Spain and generates 12% of the country’s economic activity.

Juan Molas, the head of a national association of tourism companies, Mesa del Turismo, said Spain’s tourism sector has on average lost 5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) a week since March.

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